Something has happened to glass.
In the manner of an aunt turned fire-eater, uncle turned riverboat gambler, it has
become dangerously attractive. Well mannered and discreet has become unruly
and pugnacious and seductively brazen.
It can even move, too, like Keiko Mukaide’s fragile leaves sprouting from
sinister amber shoots of scorched literature. Are we referencing Hiroshima?
A puzzle throbs troublingly in the air, like an unmarked aircraft. Will destruction
overwhelm civility, or can we rely on goodness shouldering through? Ms Mukaide
will make you leave Gallery TEN in two minds. Unless you have spent more than
ten seconds studying Alan Horsley’s extraordinary dismembered torsos,
reminiscent of Goya’s Spanish war sketches. This is despair stripped naked and
scoured with salt. A table piece for a banker, perhaps?
Cooler alarm is trafficked by Alex Pearce; the combination of crude wrought iron
shrapnel? spearhead? embedded in the sleek outline of clear blown glass is
pregnant with metaphors; the spectator steps back involuntarily.
Katya Filmus’ cast panels unsettle in the same way: are these tablets from some
necromancer’s cookbook? The reversed copperplate, off-kilter irruptions and
scarlet toenails suggest someone is up to no good.
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